Greg Hinz On Politics

What really happened with Rauner and the Sun-Times?

Fights between political writers and political candidates are as old as moveable type. A colleague of mine used to say that if two or three politicians weren't screaming their heads off about him at any time, he wasn't doing his job.

That having been said, my colleague Lynne Marek's story this weekend about whether Bruce Rauner pulled strings at the Chicago Sun-Times to sideline a reporter who wrote a story the candidate didn't like is extraordinary, the latest sign of a stunningly nasty and close race for governor.

Veteran Springfield writer Dave McKinney clearly feels there was no good reason to take him off the beat for a week in the campaign's home stretch, as the Sun-Times did. He's hired ace ex-prosecutor Pat Collins to look into possible breach of his employment rights — and Mr. Collins has agreed to represent him.

The Rauner campaign said it did nothing except complain about a bad story and an alleged conflict of interest.

Sun-Times Editor-in-Chief Jim Kirk concedes that he did sideline Mr. McKinney for the better part of the week after receiving "inaccurate and spurious" charges against him from the Rauner campaign, but he notes that the reporter is back on the beat.

So where's the truth in this tempest?

The honest answer is, I don't know enough yet to fully judge. I can put together plausible explanations that make Mr. Rauner look bad or that shift the blame elsewhere.

What I do know is that it's fair to ask whether the Sun-Times — which over the weekend made the equally extraordinary decision to change its policy and endorse Mr. Rauner over incumbent Pat Quinn without even giving the latter the opportunity to speak to it — is fully the master of its own house. After all, Mr. Rauner owned 10 percent of the paper until April 2013.

And it's fair to ask whether this episode tells us anything about how the still relatively unknown Mr. Rauner will govern.

Here's what I know.

Mr. McKinney has a sterling reputation as a hard-hitting reporter who will go after anybody. Earlier this year, his target was Mr. Quinn, whose handling of the anti-violence Neighborhood Recovery Initiative drew scathing reviews in Mr. McKinney's reporting.

Mr. McKinney also is a newly married man. His wife, Ann Liston, works for a media relations firm, Adelstein/Liston, that plugs for Democrats, this year including Mr. Quinn.

When Mr. McKinney got engaged last winter, he approached his editor, Mr. Kirk, and informed that Adelstein/Liston had agreed to insulate his wife from any involvement with Mr. Quinn or clients such as the Democratic Governors Association, which is spending millions on anti-Rauner ads this fall.

The arrangement was in writing, involved establishing a separate corporate subsidiary, and was so detailed that it will prevent Ms. Liston from earning her share of profits on the DGA ads, Adelstein/Liston principal Eric Adelstein told me. Equally significant, he continued, "The paper said 'great.' They signed off on it."

Perhaps that was a mistake. But such political cross-pollination is not unusual in Chicago. Just offhand, I can think of one high-profile political writer whose wife had a big state job. Or one well-known TV correspondent whose wife works for a firm that has all sorts of clients with major political interests.

For good or bad, the media culture has accepted such arrangements — provided there really is a wall — on the grounds that everyone has a right to make a living.

The lawsuit eventually was dismissed, without the judge ruling on the merits of the underlying dispute, and the parties agreed to a financial settlement. But Mr. McKinney and NBC5's Carol Marin reported on it anyhow, drawing intense fire from the Rauner campaign, which, as my colleague Ms. Marek reported, raised with the paper questions about whether Mr. McKinney had a conflict of interest.

The Rauner campaign also wanted the alleged conflict publicly disclosed. It asked questions about why the Quinn campaign was polling about the potential impact of the story even before it came out.

Team Rauner may have a point about disclosing that alleged conflict. That having been said, the campaign surely didn't say anything about potential conflicts when Mr. McKinney was savaging Mr. Quinn over the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative. It's also fair to ask about the polling, though it's highly likely that the Quinn campaign furnished some information about the suit to Mr. McKinney and Ms. Marin and, thus, obviously knew the gist of the story. Almost all negative political stories of this type are pushed by one campaign or another.

Then, something else happened: Mr. McKinney was taken off the job, not reappearing in the paper until late last week.

The Rauner campaign says "no one reached out to" Michael Ferro, who chairs the board of the Sun-Times' parent company, Wrapports LLC, and who worked closely with Mr. Rauner when the latter owned 10 percent of the company. But no one who knows for sure is saying yet who pushed the idea of sidelining Mr. McKinney.

I think it's most likely that Mr. Ferro did not know the details of the "firewall" agreement involving the McKinneys. When the firestorm burst, it's quite possible that Mr. Kirk decided to throw his outraged boss a bone and spend a few days double-checking to ensure that the promised firewall indeed was in place.

But if I were Mr. McKinney, I'd be outraged, because his de facto suspension tarnished his professional reputation. Any political writer — me included — can understand that. And, pending Mr. Collins' investigation, no one yet knows for sure who called whom and asked for what.

In that context, the paper's decision, announced on a Friday evening, to suddenly get back in the endorsement business after a three-year absence is pertinent. In fact, just before midnight on Friday, Oct. 17, the paper posted on its website an endorsement of Mr. Rauner that his campaign immediately touted far and wide:

Now, I'm in no position to criticize an endorsement of the GOP contender. Crain's editorial board did just that. But Crain's did so only after inviting each man to come in and make his case.

The Sun-Times did nothing of the sort. Its editorial board hasn't heard from Mr. Quinn since March, the governor's spokeswoman says, and he was not invited in. That suggests the endorsement was predetermined — fixed, in more direct language.

That's management's right. When a newspaper endorses a candidate, it's management and ownership speaking, not the staff. But endorsing without hearing from both sides is tacky. It undermines a paper's legitimacy. In this business, the "firewall" is supposed to separate the editorial and business sides of the publication. And that is pertinent to the question of why the McKinney matter unfolded the way it did.

My colleague Rich Miller has his own thoughts, which will publish later today. Check out his piece about how he was dismissed by the Sun-Times after penning a column critical of Mr. Rauner.

Mr. Miller is quite capable of speaking for himself. But a lot of unanswered questions remain here.

This subject may come up on tonight's debate on WLS-TV/Channel 7. I hope it does, because I and, I suspect, lots of voters would like to know more.